Papers by Sarah Iles Johnston
Archiv für Religionsgeschichte vol. 16, 2015
Ib egin by summarizing work that has been done concerning ap ersistent question in the studyo fa ... more Ib egin by summarizing work that has been done concerning ap ersistent question in the studyo fa ncient magic: how did practitioners balance empirical reality against theiro wn imaginations?I go on to suggest that my recent work on Greek myths, which usesi deas developed in media studies and social psychology, can help. This work suggests that myths' authority rested in large part on their effectiveness as lively,c ognitively-engagingn arrations, which in turn enabled audience members to build strongr elationships with the myths' characters,w ho weret he gods and heroes worshipped in cult.F or purposes of the present article, the most importantpoint to emerge from my work is that each name of am ythic character instantlye vokes for the audience al arge,vivid history of that character and of his or her interactions with other characters.Ithen go on to examine what amountst o ' Greek myth' in manym agical papyri of latera ntiquity-not stories per se,b ut the listing of characters' names. Extending my earlier observations,Is uggest that the vivid story-world thatt hese names created for each person who spoke, read or heard the spells,g avet hoses pells enormous authority by evoking largern arratives or complexes of narratives. To illustrate this, Ie xamine PGM IV.1390-1495,a spell that lists al arge number of Underworld divinities. Ioffer variations of my approach by examining
A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology, ed. Vanda Zajko and Helena Hoyle, 2017
One could say that the comparative approach to myth began as soon as people started to discuss (r... more One could say that the comparative approach to myth began as soon as people started to discuss (rather than simply re-narrate) myths. Herodotus discusses the differences between the figure whom the Greeks call Heracles, and a different figure (or so Herodotus claims) whom the Egyptians call Heracles. (Hdt. 2.42-45). How are these figures and the stories told about them to be understood in relation to one another, he wonders? Are they all really of Egyptian origin, simply borrowed and elaborated upon by the Greeks? Or perhaps they are really Phoenician in origin, borrowed by both Egyptians and Greeks? At heart, who was this guy Heracles, anyway? This sort of quandary-and the desire to resolve it by seeking some oldest layer of "original" myth and tracing its varied manifestations forward in time-would have a long history among later comparativists, even as their methodologies became more sophisticated. The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries But if we leave antiquity aside, we could begin the history of the comparative approach in the seventeenth century, when missionaries and other travelers, having encountered natives in the Americas, Africa, and the East, noticed that some of the stories they told were similar to those known from the "high cultures" of Europe, particularly ancient Greece and Rome. Instinctively, the visitors began to compare the two. 1 By the late eighteenth century, the habit of comparing myths was well established enough to be used for other purposes. Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) theorized that the essential spirit of a people (Volkgeist) could be recovered by studying their mythology and language. Believing as well in the 9
Los Angeles Review of Books, 2021
Review of Tanya Luhrmann, How God Becomes Real (2020)
Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, 2019
The Story of Myth, forthcoming in November 2018 from Harvard University Press (flier and table of... more The Story of Myth, forthcoming in November 2018 from Harvard University Press (flier and table of contents)
Ib egin by summarizing work that has been done concerning ap ersistent question in the studyo fa ... more Ib egin by summarizing work that has been done concerning ap ersistent question in the studyo fa ncient magic: how did practitioners balance empirical reality against theiro wn imaginations?I go on to suggest that my recent work on Greek myths, which usesi deas developed in media studies and social psychology, can help. This work suggests that myths' authority rested in large part on their effectiveness as lively,c ognitively-engagingn arrations, which in turn enabled audience members to build strongr elationships with the myths' characters,w ho weret he gods and heroes worshipped in cult.F or purposes of the present article, the most importantpoint to emerge from my work is that each name of am ythic character in-stantlye vokes for the audience al arge,vivid history of that character and of his or her interactions with other characters.Ithen go on to examine what amountst o
From *Narrating Religion* ed. Sarah Iles Johnston (MacMillan 2016)
Narrating Religion
From *Narrating Religion* ed. Sarah Iles Johnston (MacMillan 2016)
This essay starts from the premise that ghost stories of the late 19th and 20th centuries often e... more This essay starts from the premise that ghost stories of the late 19th and 20th centuries often engaged the same issues as older 'gnostic' treatises did (taking a particular line from Emanuel Swedenborg), but had the advantage of being able to describe encounters between humans and higher entities far more vividly than the treatises, and the corollary advantage of suggesting new ramifications of such encounters. It focuses on how such stories explore the possibility that, through encounters with higher entities who emerge as negative, protagonists discover that the divine world is either corrupt and ill-intended or (worse) completely meaningless. The first case, Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan (1890), is contextualized not only within contemporary reactions to Darwin's theories of evolution (developing Adrian Eckersley's study) but also contemporary conceptualizations of the debt that modern civilization owed to ancient Greece and Rome. The second examines how H.P. Lovecraft developed Machen's ideas in 'The Dunwich Horror' (1929), where mastery of ancient languages unleashes horror. The third case, Peter Straub's Ghost Story (1979)—an homage to Lovecraft and Machen— delivers an even darker 'gnostic' message: entities whom we assume to have purposes (even if dark purposes) have none at all; only the well-skilled narrative can bring them into order and save himself from perdition.
This essay stands back and looks at the large variety of ways in which religious ideas are narrat... more This essay stands back and looks at the large variety of ways in which religious ideas are narrated, or ideas about religions are narrated. It appears in Jeffrey J. Kripal, ed. Religion: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2016, which is the first, introductory volume of what will be a 10-volume series on religion published by MacMillan, for use in upper-level courses on religion or by the general public. The volume that I am editing myself, called Narrating Religion, will be the final one in the series and should be out next year.
ZPE 191 (2014) 32-35, Oct 2014
Poetry as Initiation, Hellenic Studies 63, eds. Ioanna Papadopoulou and Leonard Muellner (Harvard UP 2014)
in Asdiwal: Revue Genevoise d'Anthropologie et d'Histoire des Religions 7 (2012) 21-40.
History of Religions, May 2013
Arethusa 45.2, 2012
While traveling through the southeast Argolid, Pausanias pauses in the town of Hermione, where he... more While traveling through the southeast Argolid, Pausanias pauses in the town of Hermione, where he witnesses an annual ritual in honor of Demeter called the Chthonia (2.35.5-8):
in Reflections on Religious Individuality, ed. J. Ruepke (Berlin 2012) 99-117.
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Papers by Sarah Iles Johnston